UFC Vegas 64, on paper, was on the worst Fight Nights in awhile and was looking like it could potentially be the worst UFC event of the year. The final two fights of the night were basically all that the card had to promote (using that term loosely in today's MMA landscape) and they were pretty interesting. Luckily, the card turned out to be a lot closer to an average Fight Night than a truly awful one, even if the names on the card were very uninspiring. The last two fights lived up to the marginal hype they had as well. Neil Magny vs Daniel Rodriguez was pretty fun and it was good to see Magny look much more like himself than he did in his previous appearance. The main event was a bit slower than we expected, but it ended up being an ok fight and a reasonable end to the night. It isn't a card that we'll be remembering forever, but I don't really think it's a card we'll be remembering for being horrible either, and that is probably the best case scenario for that card. Let's talk about the ramifications and what we saw from each fighter.
Amanda Lemos picked up a knockout win in the third round as a fairly sizeable underdog and I don't know that it's being talked about enough. Not many were really expecting her to win this fight, but it looked like she came out with a solid gameplan and executed pretty well. Her early fight strategy sort of reminded me of what the aging version of Yoel Romero does at times. Yoel has always been "aging" in an MMA sense as he made it into the UFC at 36, but he's just on a different aging curve than most other humans. He hasn't had the cardio to push hard and just bite down for a full 15 minutes, so he does this thing where he just kinds of stands there and forces his opponent to come to him so he can explode in short bursts of strikes. That is more or less of what we saw from Lemos here. We all knew her cardio is what was holding her back, but she kept the pace so slow that it really wasn't an issue. We obviously saw that she has the power and knew that, so she just dared Rodriguez to come into range. Early on, Marina didn't really want to and she tried just landing kicks from range, which was ok, but no one was pulling away with the round. Lemos shot for a takedown and ended up pulling Marina on top of her, which may have been enough to swing the otherwise uneventful round in Marina's favor (it did on 2 of 3 judges cards). Lemos got the takedown much earlier in the second round and even though she didn't do a ton of damage, the control was the most impactful thing in the round, and clearly won Lemos the round. Because Marina couldn't be sure that she actually won the first round, she started feeling the pressure in the third round and was forced to enter range more frequently. She started boxing with Lemos and she was able to land a massive right hand that had Rodriguez very wobbly. She backed up to the cage and Lemos poured it on with big shots. Rodriguez was doing a pretty good job of blocking or at least partially deflecting a lot of them, but the referee stepped in to end the fight. Was it maybe a bit early? Sure, but not enough for me to feel like we were robbed of something. Lemos was able to largely do exactly what she needed. She kept the pace low, got to her takedowns, and landed power shots. Those were probably her 3 biggest boxes to check and she did all 3 in the first 3 rounds and she got the win. She looked in over her head against Jessica Andrade, but she has bounced back from that in a big way and she looks poised to make a run at a potential title shot.
As of this writing, the rankings aren't yet updated, so I'll have to use my imagination a bit. I suspect that Lemos will come in at the number 4 spot, behind Jessica Andrade and in front of Yan Xiaonan. It doesn't matter too much because Andrade is fighting at flyweight in her next bout anyways, but they can't put Lemos ahead of her after she lost so dominantly not that long ago. Zhang Weili is challenging for Carla Esparza's title in only a few days, so we'll have some clarity on the title picture soon. The women's strawweight division moves pretty slowly, so I wouldn't expect the title to be defended until at least May at the earliest. I think that provides time to conduct a number one contender fight between Lemos and Yan Xiaonan. They're both coming off of wins and are probably the most deserving right now. The problem is that Rose is kind of lurking and we don't know exactly what her status is. I think it will come down to the outcome of this weekend. If Carla retains, there's not going to be any demand for another fight with Rose anytime soon. If Weili wins the belt, there will be a ton of demand for Rose as she already has multiple wins over Weili. A Carla win would also minimize the need for a Yan Xiaonan fight since Carla already beat her pretty convincingly. Lemos should be rooting for a Carla Esparza win as she has the potential to slide right into a title fight at that point. I suppose Andrade could earn a title fight against Carla with a win over Lauren Murphy as well, even though it is in a different weight class. It's hard to really predict what is next for Lemos until we know who the champion is, but I can't imagine she's more than a win away from the belt. I kind of would like her to get one more, but beating the number 3 ranked fighter in the division is probably enough to just walk into a title fight, especially if Carla Esparza is still the champion this time next week.
Marina Rodriguez lost and she didn't look particularly good in doing so. She came out so tentative that she really didn't give herself a chance in the early going. She won the first round based on a Lemos mistake, but it was close enough that she couldn't be sure. She cleanly lost the second round because she still hasn't developed anything resembling a get up game. That left her with the potential of being down 2-0 going into the third and forced her to be a bit reckless. She had to start pressing the issue a bit and that got her cracked with a massive right hand and couldn't recover. I said before that I thought the stoppage was a tick early, but not enough that it was egregious. Rodriguez was hurt badly and forced an awkward reaction where Rodriguez dropped her hands didn't seem to really know exactly what was going on. She did defend the follow up shots well for the most part, but having Lemos throw 8+ unanswered bombs, whether they landed on the arms/hands or not, is going to get a fight stopped most of the time after that kind of initial reaction. It was just a curious approach from Rodriguez as we've really never seen her be that passive before. I suspect it was the power of Lemos that had her so cautious, but I thought the striking gap was wide enough that she should've been ok. Standing and trading isn't her game, so I'm not sure why she went away from her stick and move, range based striking. She's shown a good jab in the past and just chose not to go to it. Obviously, she didn't want to use her clinch work as much here because she would have to close the distance and stay within the range of the Lemos power and also expose herself to takedowns. Being so cautious also allowed Lemos to extend her cardio because there was virtually no pace in the first two rounds. I don't know if it was a poor gameplan or if she just got touched early and got scared off by the power, but it clearly wasn't the typical Marina Rodriguez that we've become accustomed to over the last few years. Hopefully it was just a bad night at the office for her and she'll be able to bounce just fine in the near future.
Trying to figure out exactly where this puts Marina is interesting. I don't think she ultimately drops too far because she has somewhat recent wins over both Yan Xiaonan and Mackenzie Dern, so she probably ends up ranked 5th or so. With Lemos potentially sitting on the title shot, the options are a little slim for Marina. The only fresh matchups for Marina are Zhang Weili, Rose Namajunas, Jessica Andrade, and Virna Jandiroba. I suppose the winner between Angela Hill and Emily Ducote is also in play, but that's a pretty significant drop. A matchup with Weili requires her to lose this weekend because if she has the belt, that is obviously off the table. A Weili win not only takes her off of the table, but also probably Rose as if someone that she has 2 wins over has the title, she can easily slide into a title fight herself. If Carla wins, I think a fight with Weili or Rose is almost too easy to make. A win for Rodriguez is enough to put her right back into a title fight after that in all likelihood. If Weili wins, she'll probably have to fight down unless the UFC chooses to make a rematch. The Tecia Torres fight was long enough ago that it can be remade without too much of an issue. The Virna fight is fine, although I'm not sure what purpose it really serves other than to just get both women a fight. I'm all for fighters getting paid though, so I won't complain, it will just seem a little weird. That really leaves the Andrade fight as the big one. While I would love to see it, it really isn't clear what division she'll be fighting in full time right now. She's just been bouncing around picking up whatever fight she can get, which is fun, but puts her in a weird spot when it comes to title conversations. I really want to see Marina vs Rose, but predicting what Rose is going to do and when has largely proven to be a waste of time over her career. I guess Andrade is the best balance of likely and what I want, but a Carla win makes the Weili fight a very decent possibility.
What do you guys think? What did you think of the fight? What surprised you? Who do you want to see these women fight next? As always, thanks for reading and have a good day. I think I'm skipping the round up this week to dive more heavily into UFC 281, so be on the lookout for that.
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